Girl Dies of Electric Shock from Mobile Phone Charger: Facts

Story:

Little girl died of electric shock.
She put mobile charger pin in mouth while the charger was plugged on in the socket.

Other Versions

1. This little girl died of electrocution, she put her dad’s mobile phone charger pin in her mouth while the charger was plugged in the wall… This untimely demise could have been avoided had her parents read my warnings…

2. Small girl died of electric shock coz of putting mobile phone charger pin in mouth while charger was plugged on.

Analysis:

A story with a picture showing a grieving father carrying her child claims that the little girl died after electrocution while playing with the electrical cord of a mobile charger. The picture also shared with few other stories became popular online through Facebook, Twitter and other social networking websites. Let us analyze whether or not the said incident is a fact.

Various Stories

In Jan 2015, the picture accompanied a story on a Facebook page saying the girl with her grieving father was a Syrian victim of the country’s ongoing civil war. Another story on a Facebook page said the girl was killed in celebratory gunfire after Iraq won over Iran in a soccer match. Then surfaced the story on Twitter in Feb 2015 that said the little girl died of electric shock when she put mobile charger pin in mouth while the charger was plugged on in the socket.

As explained in a related story ‘Mobile Phone Blast while Charging,’ the serious kind of accidents suggested in the story happen rarely and that too because of faulty mobile phone manufacturing, battery problems or low quality chargers. In the article, you can also find safety precautions to avoid such accidents. Considering the aforementioned facts, and also because of unknown source of the picture in question, the phone charger accident is most certainly hoax – the girl probably looks ill for some reason.

Baby Dies in Electrocution Case

Another Picture

Another popular, disturbing image of two photographs of what is portrayed as before and aftermath of a baby who died in a similar electrocution case mentioned above can be seen above. The story appears on a Facebook page with a text saying:

The first picture shows a small boy happily playing with a plugged-in power cord, while the second one shows a dead, severely burned child who resembles the first boy. Firstly, it would be unlikely that a child would be photographed while playing with an electrical cord in his mouth. The first picture of boy, in fact, is an old stock photograph titled ‘Safety Baby Cord Chew II’ that comes with a description text “A 6-month old baby boy chews on an electrical cord. Don’t worry the power was off during the shoot“. The second picture appears to be a screenshot taken from a video (Warning: Disturbing footage) of a ‘3 years old child killed through electric shock in Quaidabad (in Pakistan)’. The video does not have information to identify the exact cause of death of the child. So the two photographs show different children in unrelated scenarios. But in any case, it is certainly safe to keep children away from any such electrical wires and devices.